Snap Pop - This Is Not A Joke


by Bill Heck, 1999


Mr. Bungle cultivated a rather large undeground following with the release of their self-titled CD back in the grunge days of 1991. Theyw ere signed to Warner Brothers in an effort to capitalize on the recent success of Faith No More, the band that shared members with Mr. Bungle. That band's then-new album, The Real Thing, kept the band on tour for over two years and made them a household name thanks to the single "Epic." Mike Patton, the singer for both groups, was also clearly the catalyst of both groups, bringing his signature whisper to a gut-wrenching-scream style to both projects. Bungle was Mike's second band out of high school and the guys knew each other long before then. When he joined FNM, Mike still kept one foot firmly rooted in Bungle as a "side project." The Mr. Bungle debut was a masterfully schizoid offering, produced by avant-garde composer John Zorn. The group toured briefly and Mike was back with FNM to record and tour. A few FNM albums later, Disco Volante, Mr. Bungle's Sophomore effort was released and pished the limits of noise, blending techno, Arabian, metal, jazz, Latin, and pop. A short tour again, then back to DNM for three more discs that are all highly underrated platters of great music. As of early this year, Faith No More are no more, and Mike has gone on to start more side projects and launch his own labal, Ipecac Records. Meanwhile, Mr. Bungle is gearing up for their third and perhaps best effort to date, in what could make for a banner CD, tour and year for the band (see the CD review in this issue). I experienced an amazing show at the 9:30 club, but not before a revealing chat with Bungle's Trey Spruance and Mike Patton.

Do you consider this album a serious departure for the band or more of a straight-faced joke with fans directed at Warner Brothers?

Spruance: It's weird the different reactions we get. Some people say, "Oh it's not at all different from Disco Volante, it's still really weird and crazy." But to us, this is about as straight as it gets and we intentionally did that. Not as a joke, but as a conscious shift of gears just because we always do that. It would have been very easy for us to just continue along the lines of Disco Volante, but a few of us just didn't want to do that. We like to keep the records a little different.

Do you find that a lot of fans sort of take sides on the first two albums, liking one and not the other due to the considerable difference between the two?

Spruance: Yeah, somewhat, but we're down with evolution. If it didn't happen, the whole thing would just stagnate. It's what we've always done, even before the label, and it's what we'll always do.

What kind of relationship do you guys have with Warner Brothers now?

Spruance: Bad. It's always been pretty bad. It's never really changed. Whether we do a weird album like Volante, or a straight-ahead-ish one like this, the problems are always different, but they're always there.

Franly, it's kind of surprising, with the big record business shake up, that they didn't drop you becuase you're not a "radio-friendly unit shifter" band.

Spruance: It's just really screwy. The keep us for pure numbers. Because first of all, they don't spend a dime on us, but at the same time, we don't end up going into debt. A lot of the bands you hear a lot about for a year or so, and then they're gone. Their money doesn't get recouped, so they get dropped. 'Cause Warner doesn't cut bands, but it cits personnel very often. So for us, we don't get dropped or cut because we have a strong fan base and cult following that they don't know anything about and did nothing to foster, so when the cuts come, we make it. They scratch their heads and say, "What are we gonna do with this band?...I don't know."

What was their reaction when you brought them the new album? I can see them listening to it and going, "Holy shit, I hear a single!!!"

Spruance: Well there were a few people who did feel that way, but also a few that didn't, and it ended up with a lot of bickering and in-fighting within the company and us getting tugged in different directions. We ended up just standing back and going, "Well you dight it out, we're going to go on tour and we're going to play." But now the problem is that our record isn't coming out overseas and it's not Warner, it's Slash, the company that does our distribution. They're in distribution negotiations right now to get their point one percent of each CD, which spells disaster for anybody trying to get product out of the U.S. It's effecting 20 or 30 bands at this point. And our biggest fan-base is in Australia and our biggest market is overseas, so it's pretty damaging. Luckily, though, the record is doing really well here.

Do does that mean we might se the first official Mr. Bungle single?

Spruance: It's so weird, this whole fiasco. Apparently you can't even be on commercial radio without having your song remixed! There's no such thing as it coming out the way it was supposed to be on the record. Some fucker has to cut something out of it or add a hip-hop beat to it. So, now we're in the process of letting somebody do that.

So you sent your stuff off to Puffy?

Spruance: (laughs) See that's the thing with the different camps at Warner! Some of them wanted to do that and others were like, "No let's no spend any money, we'll get some (nobody) to do it for nothing." We would like somebody to do it that has good taste, you knoe, and somebody we won't have to pay a million dollars to do it! We could easily do it ourselves, because we know our stuff and the formats, but the last thing they want to do is trust the artist with anything.

Ouch. Okay, we'll get off Warner's back now. Do you guys have any plans at all to release any of the many pre-label demos that are out and circulating among the fans and selling on the Internet?

Spruance: I don't think we'll release them. What I've seen of them up on the Internet, that's the way to go--to put them up as MP3s and make them available like that so anybody can get it.

Are you going to do that?

Spruance: Well some people have done it, but there's still some indecision within the band on what way to go with that, but I think it will eventually go that way. We don't want to get into really re-releasing them, cause there's just so much music. The way I see it that is the only people who are really gonna want it are the people that are really into that band and are gonna dig for it, so we might as well make it easy for them. Otherwise, some prick is just gonna make CDR copies, which has been happening, and rip off our fans.

Speaking of unreleased and hard to find stuff, there were rumors of a covers album Mr. Bungle was supposed to put out. What happened to that?

Spruance: That was prematurely announced, and there never was going to be a covers album, but we did go into the studio to record some of the covers we did on the Disco Volante tour. We never finished them, we just did the basic tracks. I'm sure someday we will go back in and do them.

How about a b-sides from this album?

Spruance: There are a couple of things we recorded and there are still some things from Disco Volante too. But we still have yet to release a single. But when we do, we'll have a bunch of b-sides and we'll throw them on there. Or it might be a tour EP. We'll get 'em out there sooner or later. Originally we were gonna have earlier stuff come out on later albums, but we scrapped that idea, cause there's so much music it's just ridiculous. So now that we're more focused and playing as a band more often, we'll just put out more stuff.

So that means we'll be seeing Mr. Bungle albums more than once every decade?

Spruance: Well the thing that's nice now is that we're all in the same boat. Like, I've got my side thing (The Secret Chiefs) and they've got theirs (Fantomas, John Zorn, etc.), so we're all going at the same pace now and it's gonna be a lot easier to schedule stuff. And I know I said that last time around, but hopefully--I think so. I mean, we have new management now and everything's coming together and just seems ready to go.

I see you've brought out every piece of hardware you guys own on this tour! How hard it is to keep setting up and breaking down all that high dollar, high tech equipment?

Spruance: It sucks, but I have to mention some good things about the staff here. They've all been so damn helpful and professional about us and our toys. Half the clubs we've played at so far, they look at our fucking sheet (equipment setup schematic) that we fax to them in advance, and go, "duhhhhh...I thought it was a fuckin' joke!". They just stand there looking lost. It's so bad, I've had to cable the fucking stage myself! I got so fed up dealing with it all, I've given up using my amplifiers. I had to simplify, because the keyboard parts and samples just got so complicated this time. I've got everything going direct now, and it actually sounds better.

How about the covers for this tour? They're one of the highlights of the shows with fans.

Spruance: You know, actually there aren't that many this time, simply because getting the new songs off this record together live has been a bitch. It took me over a month and a half working on the samples, programming and routing. Getting it all set up so three people can control it was pretty gnarly. So that ended up eating up a major, major chunk of our rehearsal time. From the time we finished the record, we only actually rehearsed for three weeks before starting the tour. So when it came time to put together the show, we revived a couple of old ones and threw in only a few new ones. We wanted to focus more on our music this time around, cause with three albums, there's just that much more shit to play now.

What's the ratio look like for song selections from each album?

Spruance: Well, we're playing pretty much everything off the new record, just the highlights of Disco Volante, but even more from the first record.

Lastly, what happened with the cancelled Virginia Beach show, scheduled for the day after tomorrow?

Spruance: Oh shit, well what happened was that we played a few shows we shouldn't have played. What happens is that every time we go out, so much time passes between tours that promoters are reluctant to book us into clubs we should get booked into. Especially when we're dealing with a new promoter. They're like, "Mr. Who...What?" or "Well Mike Patton's the singer, well that'll draw maybe 300." They don't know anything about us and we don't have radio airplay so they think, "yeah sure, you'll draw a thousand." So we get booked into a tiny little place and we get shafted. And that one was literally gonna be a loser kind of dive for us. And we don't mind playing small places, but the tickets weren't selling that good, the deal wasn't that good, and we can't do this, cause we've done it to ourselves three times already on this tour. Luckily the tour's going really well though and the shows are almost all selling out. And the tour's booked so tight--we've had one day off so far for 25 days. So after tomorrow we've actually got two days off!

Minutes before the show, I tracked down Mike for an unscheduled quickie, which he was nice enough to grant me oved some cold Chinese carryout.

The new CD sounds really catchy and I can see it maybe even crossing over to that mysterious land of commercialism. What do ya think?

Patton: Whatever. Obviously we'd like a lot of people to at least hear it. If it happens, great. If it doesn't happen, I'm not gonna slit my wrists over it.

I know you wrote almost all the lyrics for both FNM and Bungle, but it seems your are acquiring more and more music writing credits with each subsequent release. How do you go about writing, and what's the reason behing the steady increase?

Patton: Well I've pretty much always had at least a hand in the music. For this band, we never even divided up credits for the first record. Cause we were still a bunch of kids (laughs)! And when you get older you start realizing, you know, you wanna get credit for what you do. And in a band as big as ours, certain people end up doing a little bit more, and others have to pull their weight in other respects, so, (pause) I think when you're a teenager and kind of goofing around, all in one living room, doing the John Belushi thing, it kind of makes more sense to write music together and take credit together. But when you really start working and taking the time on the music, you wanna also get credit for it.

So do you demo your own stuff first at home?

Patton: Yeah. I demo everything. I demo almost everything I do. I kind of have a home studio. Most people wouldn't call it that, but it works for me (laughs). Doing it that way makes working with these guys real easy. And when I give them a tape, if it's not exactly my idea, and it's usually a little garbled and funky. But they know what I mean, cause we've known each other for so long. It's nice not having to go through the whole translation process.

Thanks Mike, I know you gotta go, and I appreciate it.

Patton: No problem, I'd do anything for Snap Pop, and I think I've totally fallen in love with you over these last five minutes...take me now!

(Writer's note: ok, I made that last part up.)


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